Treestands Cranston RI

Treestands are a type of hunting supplies. Read on to learn more information on treestands in Cranston, RI and gain access to climbing stands, ladder stands, hang-on treestands, treewalker treestands, and tripod stands, as well as advice and content on treestand accessories.

Some Recommended Rifles for Treestand Hunting

As the allure of hunting big whitetails becomes more and more a passion for many, we are finding that the recent (historically speaking) popularity of hunting deer from a tree stand is becoming the way to do it. I'll make no statement either for or against that technique here. This will be simply an essay on what I feel are some outstanding rifles for tree stand use.

Before we go even one more step, let's all remember that safety is first and foremost for anyone wanting to hunt from a 'high" stand. A safety belt or harness should always be worn and thought must be given to the very safest way to get your firearm up there with you. Never compromise safety for anything when it comes to using firearms.

A rifle should always be unloaded (at least the chamber) and hoisted up, butt end first, to you when you are situated and strapped into your tree. And, of course, at the end of your stay it should be lowered muzzle first to the ground (again with at least the chamber empty) before you un-strap yourself and exit your stand. Take special care that the muzzle does not dig into the ground and become plugged, a fine way to blow-up a rifle.

Now that we are all clear on that let's get to the meat of our subject, what makes a rifle a good one for that moment when a deer finally shows itself after your long wait. I feel that one very important thing to keep in mind is how easily you will be able to handle your firearm while perched as high as 20 something feet up in a tree. I have found that a rifle on the shorter side, say one not much over 42" long, makes the handling part much easier in most types of stands. An open front climbing stand is perhaps the easiest in which to maneuver a rifle. The ladder type stands with a bar across the front work well. But any totally enclosed stand can be tough to move a long rifle around in. It can simply be very awkward at times.

A rifle of say 38"-42"(or even shorter) what many would call a carbine, is just about right in most tree hunting situations. Think about it, most tree stands are located in densely wooded areas, and also normally have restricted fields of view. The notion of needing a far-reaching long barreled rifle to do the job is ludicrous in many situations. There are any number of very fine carbine length rifles that might fit the bill.

Let's start with lever actions. From a Marlin 336, 1894, 1895 and similar models, a Henry Big Boy, maybe one of the millions of Winchester Model 94's, or even some nice discontinued models like the Savage 99 or the sweet Winchester Model 88. To the gun, they all would make a fine choice, and please make mine scoped. A 1-4x, or 2-7x variable or a fixed power scope in the 2x to 4x range will do nicely.

There are some very nice compact bolt action rifles, such as the Ruger M77RSI, Remington Model 7 and the Winchester Model 70 Featherweight as a few examples and they will all work splendidly as well. The types of scopes me...

Treestand Placement

You've just secured the hunting hotspot of a lifetime. You know it holds plenty of deer and even a few big ones to boot! Now comes the award winning question - where do you hang your treestand? Choose the right spot and that monster buck you've been dreaming of could very well materialize before your eyes. Select the wrong tree and you could be in for some serious disappointment!

I'd bet big bills that you've stood in the woods and thought those very thoughts. Truth is we've all done it. For me personally, this rang true with a stand my wife sat last November. Investing a lot of time analyzing the property, I eventually settled on a tree positioned 15 yards from two sizable scrapes. Game trails intersected in every direction within bow range of the tree.

"This one's a slam dunk," I thought to myself. We'd been watching a 150-class whitetail work that block of woods and figured it would be a great archery deer for my wife. To give you the Cole's notes version of the story, she hunted it hard during the peak of the rut and had several smaller bucks and does below the stand. Wouldn't you know it though, the 150 always stayed just out of archery range. One day she sat from sun up to sun down in freezing conditions and saw non-stop action all day long. Every 20 minutes she'd watch deer; sometimes only does, other times just bucks, then she'd see bucks fighting, and every so often bucks chasing does. To keep things interesting every so often the big guy would show himself. Much to her frustration and mine, that buck never did present a shot opportunity! In retrospect, I'd placed the treestand 30 yards off the mark. Each time she would see the big one, he'd use the same corridor up the hill from where she was sitting. Very frustrating indeed! Bottom line - stand placement is not an exact science, but there are key indicators we should look for when choosing a site.

Taking to the Trees Across North America, more deer are harvested each year from treestands than by any other method. A well-placed stand allows the hunter to avoid a deer's direct field of vision while also using thermals to carry scent away from the immediate area. Knowing when, where and how to situate a tree stand can literally make or break a hunt. Through trial and error, I've learned some significant 'dos' and 'don'ts' when it comes to treestand placement. And let me tell you, I've experienced the best and worst of stand hunting. I've been lucky enough to take exceptional trophy class animals with little time at all invested on stand, but I've also invested hundreds of hours perched high up in a tree with nothing to show for my efforts but a sore hind end.

Analyzing the Woods and Choosing the Best Tree The biggest challenge most of us face with our hunting is limited time, so it's important to do everything we can to place our treestands in an area with the greatest chances of encountering game. Simply put, when you explore new territory, look for trail intersections, ri...

Viewable Area - The “Long” and “Short” of Treestand Hunting

Setting a tree stand location is a very delicate thing.

Only a difference of 20 yards one way or the other can be the deciding factor between great success and a stand where no one over takes a deer.

There are many variables such as backdrop, prevailing winds, accessing and exiting the stand without alerting the deer and so forth, but this tip is going to be concerned with the viewing area from the stand while rifle hunting – which will also address something that I feel very strongly about – edge cover.

Deer love edges… they weave in and out of these areas, particularly if one of the edges is that of a denser area, like a thickly overgrown stand of woods next to a pine plantation – or a thicket that borders a swamp – where there is more open land above the thicket and then also inside the thicket where the swamp opens up.

When positioning my stands, I find it is very beneficial to get a long view and a short view – by that, I mean that I want to have one area where I can see a fairly good distance – hopefully at least 100 yards – and then another view that allows me to look down into a thicker area.

Hopefully, in both of these types of habitat, there is deer sign that caused you to want to put the stand there in the first place, be it trails, scrapes, food sources, an abundance of tracks – well, you get the picture.

The deer will use the open areas when they feel all is secure – but they know they have the thicker area to escape to when danger threatens. The added factor is that some deer, and most importantly bucks when they are not crazed by the rut, tend to creep through the thicker areas as travel lanes… heck, oftentimes a wise old doe will do the same thing.

A good example of this type of area would be a stand I hunted in 2009. This was an area in a fairly large club that was more or less overlooked… there was an incredibly dense planted pine plantation that was entirely overgrown with briers… I mean you literally could not walk through it – forget walking a pine row, it was not like that at all. The trails leading into and out of these pines were walked slick – they looked like cattle paths. Along the north side of the planted pines, there was a stand of mature hardwoods and the mast drop was very good that year. I located a spot along this seam, where I could look west along the edge that these two types of cover created - for as much as 300 yards – and then I found a small crease into the planted pines where I could look in a southerly direction and see what was likely an old skidder path… I could see about 35 yards into this crease. It was very thick - but you could see down into it, particularly from an elevated stand.

This allowed me to have a long view down the “edge”, where acorns were abundant and also afforded a short view into the crease to my left, which contained a great many rubs – there were 12 – 15 in that small area.